Thank you Stéphanie Abou of Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents for your hard word and tireless dedication.
To my incredible team of international publishers and translators for bringing Alice to readers around the world, deepest thanks to you for making dreams I didn’t even know I had come true.
My love, respect and heartfelt thanks to Ali Cobby Eckermann, desert-and-sea-bracelet-twin and tjanpi-T-shirt-giving ininti-sister. Thank you for appearing in my life when you did, and for your permission to include Seeds as Ruby’s own poem. Thank you for sharing your powerful words and big heart with me, malpa.
Alice Hoffman, thank you for replying to my first letter in 2009, and for your generosity of spirit sharing letters with me ever since. Thank you for your unwavering encouragement, magic, and the permission to quote from one of your letters in this novel. Thank you for writing the books that I have carried with me around the world, they have shown me the way to be brave and to believe.
To Anne Carson, thank you for honouring me with permission to quote your translation of Sappho’s poetry. Thank you Gracie Dietshe and Nicole Aragi of Aragi agency for your wonderful assistance in facilitating my request.
To Julianne Schultz, John Tague, Jane Hunterland and the team at Griffith Review in 2015, thank you for all you do and have done for Australian readers and writers. Thank you for being home to my first paid publication, and for giving the first chapter of this novel your annual writer award. Your investment in me changed the course of my life.
Thank you to Varuna the Writers’ House, for the perfect amount of eeriness, beauty, and solitude I didn’t know I needed so much to begin editing this book. To the women I wrote through the dark with on my residency: Biff Ward, Jackie Yowell, Helen Loughlin, and Bec Butterworth, you are always in my heart, around a banquet table of Sheila’s cooking. With wine.
To David Jayet-Laraffe of Frog Flowers, Giulia Zonza of On Love & Photography, and Nancy Spencer of Nancy Spencer Makeup, thank you for your alchemy, conjuring a tropical garden fairytale within a Manchester winter snow globe and placing me in the centre. Thank you for creating a once-in-a-lifetime author photo, and a joyous love-filled experience I will never forget.
To Edith Rewa, flower queen and enchanting botanical artist, thank you for flower illustrations that cast such powerful spells they don’t let go.
To the booksellers who supported Alice Hart, and me, in the lead up to publication: thank you for all the book magic you bring into the world, and for sharing some of that with me and this novel. To the booksellers who will read this novel, give it a place on a bookstore shelf, and share it with readers, thank you for being a light in every city and town, and making my childhood dream as a booklover and aspiring writer come true.
Thank you to Kate Forsyth and Carol Crennan for offering me a sponsored place on the History Mystery and Magic writing retreat in Oxford, 2015, an experience that had a profound effect on my writing and me as a writer. To my fellow retreat writers Sarah Guise, Kellie Watson, and Bec Smedley, thank you for sharing your hearts and stories with me. Thank you, Kate, for your friendship and for reminding me Alice was an ember that fear and anxiety could not extinguish.
To those who lit the way for me while I was in the dark woods writing this novel, thank you for your steadfast friendship, love, empowerment and encouragement: Favel Parrett, Courtney Collins, Nicole Hayes, Alys Conran, Meredith Whitfield, Anni Sartorio, Nick Benson and the Benson family, Simone Gingras-Fox and the Gerlinger family, Dimi Venkov, Ashley Hay, Khela Hutchinson, Gregoreen and PD, Eva de Vries, Olga Van Der Kooi (and Rogier and Louise), Helen Weston and JP, Sarah Rakich, Vanessa Radnidge, Lilia Krasteva, Jesse Blackadder, Andi Davey, Philippa Moore, Jenn Ashworth, Jane Bradley, Chris and Debbie Macintosh (and Beth and Lil), Cerys Jones, Helen Fulcher, Fraser How, Derek Henderson, Vicki Henderson, Stephen Ashworth, Lorena Fernandez Sanchez, Alex D’Netto, Linda Teo, Ian Henderson, Jenn Ashworth, Rachael Clegg (and Roberto, Joe, Francis, and Ruben), Susan Fernley and Brian Fox, Kate Gray, Cheryl Hollatz-Wisely, Jackie Bailey (Yen Yang and Ellie Belly), Jeremy Lachlan, Josie and James McSkimming, Sani Van der Spek, Dervla McTiernan, and Andy Stevenson (and Lou, Sam and Gina).
Particular heartfelt thanks to Kate Forsyth, Brooke Davis, Favel Parrett, Ashley Hay, Jenn Ashworth, Myf Jones, and Ali Cobby Eckermann for reading early proofs and endorsing this novel with such warmth, love, and generosity of spirit.
Thank you to Dr John Goldsmith for taking the time to meet with me, answer my relentless questions and share stories of stars and craters.
To the women I met at Singing Over the Bones training with Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estés in 2015, thank you for sharing your love and stories with me. Thank you for howling me along the way ever since.
To the men and women I studied and practised alongside at Mindfulness Self Compassion training with Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff in 2017. The timeliness of your work, empathy, support, and friendship carried me over the line, for which I am deeply grateful.
I had a public school education and some of my teachers throughout primary and high school remain standing examples of the power encouragement can have on shaping a life. Mrs Smart, Ms Pearce, Mr Chandler, Mrs Reynolds, and Mr Ham, thank you for seeing something in me I couldn’t see in myself and for teaching me how to believe in what might be possible with hard work and courage.
To the International Society, an independent charity that has been promoting diversity and providing a haven for international students, refugees, asylum seekers and locals in Greater Manchester for the last fifty years, thank you for being a place of warmth and welcome, safety and imagination, for so many thousands of us. Thank you to my International 16s around the world, I wouldn’t be the storyteller I am without you and the stories you shared with me.
Samantha Smith, incredibly talented tattooist, artist and storyteller, thank you for bringing Alice to life in and on my skin. I’m so grateful to have found you and to know you.
Melissa Acton, you are a woman who can turn a sensory deprivation chamber into a wonderland. Thank you for being one of my first readers and giving Alice a home in your book-loving heart.
Tanmay Barhale, Batman might have the notoriety, but you’re my favourite superhero. Thank you for telling me stories, some of which I hope to have honoured in this novel.
Viridiana Alonso-Lara, fire warrior, thank you for sharing your heart with me through your Mexican stories, right from the first night we met. Thank you for sharing your family and guacamole with me. Thank you for your love. Lulu wouldn’t be who she is without you.
Thank you Ammna Winchester for your friendship, and for doing me the honour of sharing your experiences with me. I couldn’t have written Alice’s time in hospital the way I have without your generous support and inspiration.
Boryana Pashova, beloved Banana, thank you for help with Bulgarian translations, for believing in me as a writer, and for showing me how to yell at a dish in the oven to make it bake faster.
Iva Boneva, Money Honey, woman extraordinaire, thank you for sharing Bulgarian fairytales with me. Thank you for all the belly-aching laughter we have had between Manchester and Sofia as we live fairytales of our own together.
Matt Warren and Nick Walsh, thank you for reminding me that laughter and love are medicine, and for teaching me never to be afraid or ashamed of being a honker.
Brooke Davis, there is not an In Gratitude section long enough for me to name everything I love and am grateful for about you. Nor are there enough daisies. Thank you for seeing me, for loving me, for letting me love you in my Doug apron whether you’re up or down your tree. Thank you for absolutely everything you have done to enable and empower Alice Hart, and me. I am bettered by the mere thought of you.